The display of video images through the use of general purpose processing platforms, such as personal computers, has proliferated as data processing capabilities have become more advanced. To facilitate the display of video images, video streams typically include information describing the image including an aspect ratio at which the video it is to be displayed. Information, such as the aspect ratio is read by a video decoder and provided to an application associated with the display of the video.
Video applications generally support the ability to modify the aspect ratio of an image. However, the rendering side of the display driver does not have access to the aspect ratio maintained by the application. Instead, the rendering side of the display driver is configured by the application with display control information, such as source an destination rectangles, to control the actual display of the image without the use of the actual aspect ratio.
The ability to display a video image on multiple display devices from a common platform has been accomplished by providing multiple sets of display control information from a specific application to one or more display drivers. Specifically, when the display of video on multiple display devices is supported, a video application provides a different set of display driver information for each display device. Because the application controls the set up of the display drivers, only source and destination video rectangles are typically provided to the device drivers to control the display of the image on both display devices. In this manner, it is known to support display of different portions of a video image on different displays by calculating and providing multiple source and destination rectangles to one or more display drivers. This support of multiple displays requires that the application be aware of each display device that is to display the image. A method and system capable of displaying video at different locations on multiple display devices using a common set of display driver data would be useful.